Employee Development on a Shoestring: Developing Talent Outside the Classroom

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Halelly Azulay and HRDQ-U recently hosted a free webinar entitled, Employee Development on a Shoestring: Developing Talent Outside the Classroom.

Halelly Azulay is a consultant, facilitator, speaker and author with over 20 years of professional experience in the fields of workplace learning and communication. She is the author of Employee Development on a Shoestring, which offers hands-on tools and techniques for developing employees outside the classroom and on a budget. Halelly is the president of TalentGrow LLC, a consulting company focused on developing leaders and teams to improve the human side of work. TalentGrow specializes in leadership, communication skills, teambuilding, facilitation, coaching, and emotional intelligence. TalentGrow works with all organizational levels including C-level leaders, frontline managers and individual contributors. Clients describe Halelly’s approach as “engaging,” “knowledgeable,” “enthusiastic,” and “inspiring.”

Close to 500 people signed up to listen to this webinar live. Missed it? Click here to watch the recording.

“Overall it was a great webinar and Halelly had great information to provide.”

“This presenter was great, clearly a subject matter expert, engaging, interesting, and she did an awesome job.”

“… I am certain the topic and information both from today and in the book will provide an additional avenue of thinking for managers who seem to lack options for keeping new supervisors engaged back in the workplace.”

With training budgets slashed and organizations struggling to do more with less, many employees as well as those responsible for their development are challenged to find ways to address employee development needs. While classroom and online training are popular development methods, they can be costly and complex, and often not readily available to match budgetary and other constraints. Even when training is available, it may not be the only or the best way to address learning needs.

Azulay started with sharing the 70-20-10 Development Rule, which is: 

1. 70% on-the-job experience
2. 20% relationship and feedback
3. 10% formal training

Azulay then went on to explain what are some of the most pressures for employee development? She thinks the most popular ones are:

• Economic constraints
• Travel time & budget
• Need just-in-time,
anytime learning
• Globalized workforce
• Dispersed workforce
• Knowledge management

She said that employee development already happens outside of the classroom- so how can we support it? The attendees were asked to share their thoughts. Some responses were:

• Project assignment
• Webinars
• Scholarly research
• Mentoring
• Cross-training

With so many great responses, Azulay then shared what she thinks are the best ways. They were as followed:

• Self-direct learning
• Volunteering
• Sabbaticals
• Mentoring
• Rotational and stretch assignments
• Special teams
• Teaching others
• Games and contests
• Digital storytelling
• Innovating/creativity zones
• Social learning

Not having enough time to dive into all of her great ideas. Azulay chose to focus on three to really zoom in on.

1. Volunteering– She started with a question, “what is volunteering?” She stressed that there are many types/reasons to volunteer. She urged that we can shift the lenses we look at volunteering to be one of development. She stated that volunteering could be such a great way for employees to gain skills.

Azulay ended with, “what is cool about it is, they’re building skills by doing things that help them practice on someone else’s turf!”

2. Digital Storytelling– So what is digital storytelling? “Digital storytelling is the creation of video and audio based social earning content.” Azulay told us. Then asked for the attendees to share their ideas about how this method can be used for employee development? Some responses were:
• Interviewing skills
• Sharing experiences
• Handling an angry customer

3. Innovation/Creating Zones– Azulay started by telling us, “people can learn a great deal by taking time away from their regular job to go work on something that interests them, that is related to the organization that isn’t part of their actual jobs.” Azulay said they can do it alone or in a group.

This interactive webinar ended with Azulay discussing implementation and action planning. She asked for the attendees to go out and try what was learned in this webinar that takes you outside the classroom.

Want to learn more about how employee development outside the classroom. If so, then click here to watch the recorded session.

Sign up today to make sure you don’t miss the next free webinar!

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